


Painted Ships

by Medie



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Character of Color, Dark Agenda, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-25
Updated: 2010-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 07:26:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/74137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Medie/pseuds/Medie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There wasn't another ship in the fleet that could lay claim to reality jumping mad-men, godlike children, and aliens who looked like living lasagna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Painted Ships

**Author's Note:**

> for [](http://dark-agenda.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**dark_agenda**](http://dark-agenda.dreamwidth.org/)'s Dark Drabblefest. Title comes from Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - _As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean._

Charlene slid into the privacy of her quarters and closed her eyes. Leaning against the wall, she rubbed the back of her neck and breathed through the discomfort that always came with a double-shift.

"A few more weeks," she reminded herself, "and then it's off Klingon patrols and back to good our old exploration mission. Nice, quiet exploration." Although she tried, Charlene couldn't even think it with a straight face. She'd transferred aboard with the captain, a part of the typical two-step rank shuffle that went with a change of command, filling a position left by a domino of promotions.

She thought about that, realizing she hadn't thought about it in a while, and let it wander a little. She'd been an ensign then. It hadn't been her first tour on a starship, that honor went to the Reliant. It didn't matter, not really, no ship could prepare you for this ship. She had a feeling even the captain himself would say that. There wasn't another ship in the fleet that could lay claim to reality jumping mad-men, godlike children, and aliens who looked like living lasagna.

Charlene loved her job, loved her ship, but some days were almost too much. The scary part wasn't that, though, the scary part was that those days usually involved routine reports and run-of-the-mill experiments.

"The Enterprise Curse," she mused. The extraordinary becoming ordinary. She smiled, rueful, and then sighed. However skewed her sense of normality, she was _tired_. Quarterly reports and an exacting nature did not an abundance of energy make.

Sighing, she scrubbed a hand over her hair and contemplated fighting the foodslot. God, she missed good coffee. Some people chased white whales or Klingon cruisers, Charlene chased cups of coffee that didn't taste like engineering waste.

The thought made her snicker as she shrugged out of her uniform, leaving it and her boots in a pile by her bed. She'd get them later.

"Maybe that's why," she said, giving the foodslot a half-hearted poke. "It's not the ship's fault the engineers programmed the slots. They've probably never tasted a good cup in their lives." She remembered the swill the Reliant's engineers had called coffee. It made the Enterprise's version taste like ambrosia.

Not that she planned on giving it a try. She settled on tea instead.

Tossing her hose in the direction of her bed, Charlene took her tea and hotfooted it across the floor to her desk. Despite her temperature settings, the floor was always _freezing_. Of course, barefoot and in her underwear, the whole room was more than a little chilly.

Her console came to life with a pass of her hand and, with interest, Charlene checked out the sectors Starfleet had assigned them. Ships had made glancing passes through it, but nothing of any depth. They'd be the first Federation presence there period.

The thought of it made her adrenaline pick up, excitement stirring it to life, and she sat down. "Of course," she said with a wry smile, "the way things have been going, we'll be out there less than a week before the Orion Syndicate takes a shot at us and blows out life support on half a dozen decks."

The desk chair was cold against her skin, leaving Charlene to squirm as she checked her console. Just over half a dozen messages waited and Commander Spock had sent three of them. She grinned and shook her head. They hadn't even left Federation space yet and he was already gearing up.

Not that Spock ever actually slowed down.

She wasn't surprised that the first two were on already planned projects - upgrading life support's stability and a new dillithium matrix. Reviewing them with a practiced eye, she dashed off quick responses to both and then moved on. The next one was more general, mixing professional and personal, and demanded a more thorough response. She took her time with that one and longer still with the response, fingers curled around her mug and legs pulled up against her chest as she thought over her answers.

With Spock, it was always difficult to tell where personal left off and professional started. Not that it was that way for anyone else onboard. Shipboard life, especially shipboard life on the Enterprise, meant that somewhere along the line off-duty and on-duty blurred into one.

After she'd finished it, Charlene rolled her neck and refreshed her tea before she moved onto the next message. She laughed at Christine's latest "McCoy-isms" and rolled her eyes at Nyota's horrible puns. She suggested a new Argosian restaurant for Helen Noel's next leave and agreed to Hikaru help with Beauregard's next re-potting. She hated that plant, but Sulu loved the old monster and she just couldn't say no.

She finished her tea with the last of her messages, darting back to the foodslot to recycle the mug.

From there, it was the sonic shower. She passed a hand over her favorite wall-hanging as she went. The lace of the fabric scratched at her fingers, reminding her of the way it had floated and flared with the movement of the dancers who'd worn it. They'd been tiny, violet-skinned people of no particular gender who'd moved in patterns that overwhelmed the human eye.

She'd bought it on one of the border worlds with the last of her ship-issued chits, enamored of the dance. It had joined her modest collection, purchases from worlds that no other humans, save her shipmates, had walked. Stars no other humans had seen. A memory made tangible in the brush of fabric against skin.

Charlene moved her head, watching the hanging's material shine beneath her cabin's lights.

"Here's hoping for no Orions," she murmured, giving it another stroke. "I want to see what's next."

A little grin lit her features as she added, "Maybe someone out here will know how to make a decent cup of coffee."


End file.
